Books Read in 2024: Fantasy/Science Fiction/Speculative
Tudor - absolutely fair opinion on Sophie Hannah. I really have no defense for reading the book, I generally hate it when the estate of a beloved writer grants permission to another author to continue the series. And this is AGATHA CHRISTIE, who thought that was a good idea? People who want to cash in, obviously. It's distasteful. And Sophie Hannah is a successful author with her own books, so again - well, never mind, it all comes down to money.
Suzanne - You get me! Please feel free to comment at length, I always feel so seen.
About my library's new fees policy, which I actually really like - there are no longer overdue fees for late books. Whatever books you have are renewed automatically as long as no one has requested them, and you get an email about that with the new due date. Once they can't be renewed, you get a notice about that. I think you get 21 days then, and they suspend your account so you can't borrow anything else until you return the book or pay a replacement fee. This has happened to me twice and my fellow delinquent friend Holly and i always confess our suspensions to each other. Then I return the book right to someone at the desk and advise them that it is the walk of shame I'm doing, so they can register it right away and put it on the holds shelf for the person who has been waiting while I either procrastinate from returning the book or read it frantically because I have the worst habit of taking out paper books and then reading ebooks until the paper books are overdue, at which point they become infinitely desirable to me and I MUST finish them. I didn't really mind paying fines - I just considered them a donation - but this system seems very fair across the board. There is still a one dollar replacement fee for books put on hold and then not picked up, which seemed a little disproportionate to me until I did my library placements at various branches of the OPL and on days when it was my job to pull the unclaimed holds there would be SHELVES of books reserved by the same library customer and not picked up, which is kind of inconsiderate and should probably be discouraged.
I've had a pretty good January, all things considered, but it's mostly because of my habit of taking to my bed super early and mainlining books in great desperate gulps. Maybe physically hiding from depression works? I'm down to going to work and cancelling everything else right now, though, because my anxiety is so bad that bar night or social events or taking a shower makes me feel like I'm going to simultaneously burst into tears, throw up and hyperventilate. I think I'll be okay if I just commit to work and survival activities for a couple of weeks. Our friends had their annual Robbie Burns party last Saturday, and I didn't think I was going to be able to get out of the house, but Matt got home from California at eleven in the morning and we had a cuddling/reassuring session and I managed to get there and it was really fun. My dad wasn't feeling well yesterday in a way that seemed like it might escalate, and by the time bar night departure rolled around I was in too much of a state so I went to bed early again. It's annoying and embarrassing, but what can you do. I keep reading about Slow January, so I could just say I'm doing that. I mean, I am kind of doing that. I did finally feel like cooking this week - crock pot roast last night, instant pot roast chicken tonight, beef stew later in the week.
Fantasy/Science-Fiction/Speculative
Good Girls Don't Die by Christina Henry: Synopsis from Goodreads: Celia wakes up in a house that isn’t hers. She doesn't recognize her husband or the little girl who claims to be her daughter. She tries to remember who she was before, because she is certain that this life―the little family-run restaurant she owns, the gossipy small town she lives in―is not her own.
Allie is supposed to be on a fun weekend trip―but then her friend's boyfriend unexpectedly invites the group to a remote cabin in the woods. The cabin looks recently assembled and there are no animals or other life anywhere in the forest. Nothing about the place seems right. Then, in the middle of the night, someone bangs on the cabin door…
Maggie, along with twelve other women, wakes up in a shipping container with the number three stamped on the back of her T-shirt. If she wants to see her daughter Paige again, Maggie must complete The Maze―a deadly high-stakes obstacle course.
Three women. Three stories. Only one way out...
-”The brunette turned her back to the wall and leaned against it. She looked as exhausted as Celia felt.
‘Typical,’ the brunette said, rolling her eyes at the door. ‘Some man doesn’t get his way and suddenly I’m the bitch for not standing still when he wanted to stab me.’”
3.5. Maybe 3.25. I appreciated what she was trying to do, and the three scenarios kind of worked with each other. It didn't go super-deep.
The Rest is Silence by Scott Fotheringham: Synopsis from Goodreads: Eco-terrorism and future shock in an epic tale that travels from New York to Nova Scotia. North Mountain, Nova Scotia. An unnamed hermit lives off the land. He tries to find love and community in this place he has decided to call home and to shake off the ghosts that haunt him. Even in his newfound domestic bliss he can’t let go of his past and starts to tell his story as a way to make sense of things. Manhattan. Benny is an ambitious graduate student, obsessed with the idea of destroying plastic waste. She is driven by a clear-eyed understanding of humanity’s failure to self-regulate. In this brave, new world, she creates bacteria that consume plastic, inadvertently creating shortages of everything from water to computers and dissolving hospital equipment, pacemakers, and shunts. In this exciting novel, full of unexpected twists and turns, the lives of Benny and the unnamed hermit come together in a dramatic climax.
I bought this book at an event where the author (Canadian, friend of a friend) was signing it, many years ago. Then I somehow misplaced it. I found it again a couple of years ago, but didn't pick it up until recently, which actually kind of worked with the Oppenheimer references, since it was just before the Oscars and I had recently watched the movie. I liked it - I was sort of bracing for a maudlin single-character monologue, so I was happy for the supporting characters and the chapters that took place in the past. This is the kind of 'apocalypse' lit that is particularly frightening, because it is subtle and eminently believable. I enjoyed the writing and the descriptions of learning to live off the land. The 'twist' was telegraphed from a mile away and is the kind of thing I'm finding wearying at this point, but was only unnecessary, not damaging.
Aurora by David Koepp: Synopsis from Goodreads: From the author of Cold Storage comes a riveting, eerily plausible thriller, told with the menace and flair of Under the Dome or Project Hail Mary, in which a worldwide cataclysm plays out in the lives of one complicated Midwestern family. In Aurora, Illinois, Aubrey Wheeler is just trying to get by after her semi-criminal ex-husband split, leaving behind his unruly teenage son.
Across the country lives Aubrey's estranged brother, Thom. A fantastically wealthy, neurotically over-prepared Silicon Valley CEO, he plans to ride out the crisis in a gilded desert bunker he built for maximum comfort and security.
But the complicated history between the siblings is far from over, and what feels like the end of the world is just the beginning of several long-overdue reckonings--which not everyone will survive . . .
The Tribe by Bari Wood: Synopsis from Goodreads: Highly acclaimed when first published in 1981, The Tribe follows a group of Jewish people who not only survive the concentration camps, but thrive. Their secret follows them to modern-day Brooklyn, where they continue their relationship and keep their deadly cabal until one day a new threat arrives...
Drawing on Jewish mythology and folklore, the novel also combines well-drawn characters and police procedural to create a memorable and humane horror novel.
-”’My father was a fisherman, out of Montauk. He went out every day but Sunday…thunder, lightning, snow…once even in a hurricane. I should have admired his gallantry, but he did it for money and he came back cold, exhausted, wretched. He left my mother alone all day and most nights. For money. My brothers thought he was a hero for his persistence. I thought that was bullshit and he was a greedy fool. He died in a storm. They never found his body and I went to seminary as a sort of protest against him. But I inherited his persistence and when I found the first shreds of feeling for this plain bit of church I’m part of, I held on to them, hold on to them still, like a dog with locked teeth. It’s not bullshit to me.’ He looked at Hawkins. ‘I’m a religious man,’ he said, ‘which means that at some level I believe in magic.’”
I knew the subject matter of this - it was referred to in another book I was reading - and since it was available as a library ebook I borrowed it. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much. I'm not sure why, except maybe some weird snobbery about 80s horror. It was excellent - sort of a profound family drama and character study involving generational trauma, with incidental horror elements. The ways in which the various characters tried so hard to be kind and understanding with each other and yet fundamentally could not reconcile their convictions reminded me somewhat of Home by Marilynne Robinson.
Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker: Synopsis from Goodreads: New York Times bestselling author Chandler Baker's Cutting Teeth is a witty, thrilling story of parental love that asks: is there anything a mother won’t do for her children? Darby, Mary Beth, and Rhea are on personal quests to reclaim aspects of their identities subsumed by motherhood—their careers, their sex lives, their bodies. Their children, though, disrupt their plans when an unsettling medical condition begins to go around the Little Academy preschool: the kids are craving blood.
Soon it becomes clear that the children are not just witnesses, but also suspects . . . and so are their mothers.As the police begin to look more closely, the children’s ability to bleed their parents dry becomes deadly serious. Part murder mystery, part motherhood manifesto, Cutting Teeth explores the standards society holds mothers to—along with the ones to which we hold ourselves—and the things no one tells you about becoming a parent.
Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.
-”And I definitely do not like how I seem to remember some really bad stuff happening – thanks, Daniel, by the way, for reminding me – and I also don’t like the feeling I”m starting to get that, in a minute or so, something else bad is going to start happening. Like this is a bad sandwich. A sandwich where the filling is a middle-of-the-night school music room in between two slices of being dead. Who orders a sandwich like that? Nobody!’”
-”’Then I’ll conserve my energy,’ Susannah said. ‘Anyway, I don’t think you should kill me. I can think of practically a dozen presents that would be better. Like a thoughtfully selected book! Or chocolate!’
Avelot said, ‘Perhaps I could give him Hector. He seems like a delightful baby,’ She didn’t remark upon the wires and cords that connected Hector to his monitor, the feeding tube taped to his nose, the cannulas in his nostrils, the tangerine Binky plugged into his mouth. Susannah felt that unwanted sympathy again. How strange it must be to find oneself arrived in the future. You wouldn’t even know the right questions to ask. What is a muffin? Should I kill this girl?’”
On the streets of the Island of Lady's Crave live 14-year-old street urchins Hark and his best friend Jelt. They are scavengers: diving for relics of the gods, desperate for anything they can sell. But there is something dangerous in the deep waters of the undersea, calling to someone brave enough to retrieve it.
Square3 by Mira Grant: Synopsis from Goodreads: We think we understand the laws of physics. We think reality is an immutable monolith, consistent from one end of the universe to the next. We think the square/cube law has actual relevance.
We think a lot of things. It was perhaps inevitable that some of them would turn out to be wrong.
When the great incursion occurred, no one was prepared. How could they have been? Of all the things physicists had predicted, “the fabric of reality might rip open and giant monsters could come pouring through” had not made the list. But somehow, on a fine morning in May, that was precisely what happened.
For sisters Susan and Katharine Black, the day of the incursion was the day they lost everything. Their home, their parents, their sense of normalcy…and each other, because when the rift opened, Susan was on one side and Katharine was on the other, and each sister was stranded in a separate form of reality. For Susan, it was science and study and the struggle to solve the mystery of the altered physics inside the zones transformed by the incursion. For Katharine, it was monsters and mayhem and the fight to stay alive in a world unlike the world of her birth.
The world has changed. The laws of physics have changed. The girls have changed. And the one universal truth of all states of changed matter is that nothing can be completely restored to what it was originally, no matter how much you might wish it could be. (I don't know what happened with the formatting there, and every time I try to fix it it creates a problem somewhere else so I apologize, please ignore).
-"Susan wanted her back. Getting her was going to require more than wanting: it was going to need luck, and speed, and muons.
Muons were the answer.
I sometimes think to myself that I read everything I can get my hands on of this author's (Seanan McGuire, who is also Mira Grant, and A. Deborah Baker - an author that she made up for her Middlegame series and then became, writing actual books around the quotes), but then I realize I don't, not nearly. I haven't finished the October Daye series, I started one of the Incryptids series but couldn't really get into it, I haven't read any of the A Deborah Baker books. She's 47 and has written more than 50 books, which boggles my mind because none of the books I've read seem like they would be tossed off of an afternoon. Some are more plot-heavy, but the writing is never sub-standard, and I'm no scientist, but the science seems fairly solid, so how the fuck does she do it? This was a fairly short entry that I discovered in the Kindle store. Sometimes an author just works for a reader, I guess?
Lock-In (Lock In #1) by John Scalzi: Synopsis from Goodreads: Not too long from today, a new, highly contagious virus makes its way across the globe. Most who get sick experience nothing worse than flu, fever and headaches. But for the unlucky one percent - and nearly five million souls in the United States alone - the disease causes "Lock In": Victims fully awake and aware, but unable to move or respond to stimulus. The disease affects young, old, rich, poor, people of every color and creed. The world changes to meet the challenge.
A quarter of a century later, in a world shaped by what's now known as "Haden's syndrome," rookie FBI agent Chris Shane is paired with veteran agent Leslie Vann. The two of them are assigned what appears to be a Haden-related murder at the Watergate Hotel, with a suspect who is an "integrator" - someone who can let the locked in borrow their bodies for a time. If the Integrator was carrying a Haden client, then naming the suspect for the murder becomes that much more complicated.But "complicated" doesn't begin to describe it. As Shane and Vann began to unravel the threads of the murder, it becomes clear that the real mystery - and the real crime - is bigger than anyone could have imagined. The world of the locked in is changing, and with the change comes opportunities that the ambitious will seize at any cost. The investigation that began as a murder case takes Shane and Vann from the halls of corporate power to the virtual spaces of the locked in, and to the very heart of an emerging, surprising new human culture. It's nothing you could have expected.
--"The threep flung the knife at me, and I flinched involuntarily. It pinged off my head and back onto the kitchen floor. When I came back up, the threep had pulled a large pot out of the pile of dirty dishes in the sink and aimed it diretly for my head. There was a gonging sound as it connected, twisting my head aside and caving in a portion of it.
It was then I realized that my rental threep’s pain receptors were dialed up really high. Some part of my brain recognized this made sense, since the rental place wanted to keep its customers from doing anything stupid with the threep, and dialing up the sensation of pain would certainly do that.
The rest of my brain was going ow jesus fuck ow ow.”
I first read this in 2014, after discovering Scalzi and getting Matt's stepdad Bill hooked on him as well. I liked it and then forgot about it, then realized there was a second book. I always think I should reread before reading next books in series, but I rarely do. This time I decided I would. When I HAVE reread, the original book sometimes doesn't hold up. That was not the case here. It was a fast, enjoyable read, but flawless world-building as to the treatment of a new disability that affects millions of people. The culture of the Hadens reminded me in many ways of the Deaf culture, which I've always found fascinating. The disability politics and the mechanisms of accessibility - or lack thereof - are well handled. Scalzi seems to be really good at creating nuanced characters without needing to put a whole lot of words into it, so it doesn't slow down the narrative flow. There's also a generous helping of humour and nerdiness - the humanoid robots used by Hadens to move around in the world are informally called 'Threeps', after C3PO from Star Wars.
Head On (Lock in #2) by John Scalzi: Synopsis from Goodreads: John Scalzi returns with Head On, the standalone follow-up to the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Lock In. Chilling near-future SF with the thrills of a gritty cop procedural, Head On brings Scalzi's trademark snappy dialogue and technological speculation to the future world of sports.
Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent’s head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are “threeps,” robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden’s Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.
You pay for persistence.
And every Haden knows you’re paying for it, too. In a community where everything is possible and anything imagined can be made real enough, persistence on a very large scale of detail is one of the few possible displays of actual wealth in a virtual world.”
Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.
Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind.
-”The sun dips to the west, while I stand on the porch watching Theo walk up the road for his shift at the guard hut, an uneasy feeling stirring in my stomach, like a scream that keeps growing louder. I wish he’d stay with me, but Parker will be waiting for him, and I know we need to pretend that nothing has changed – that we each haven’t found things left in our house like breadcrumbs in a gothic fairy tale.”
-”I stand up from the bed, the Foxtail book in my hand.
It’s heavy , a book you don’t simply open and read before sleep – a chapter here or there. You must commit to it. A book like this demands something of its reader.”
He was a very minor mage.
Unfortunately, he was all they had.
Comments
The Hill House sequel is called A Haunting on the Hill, by Elizabeth Hand. I thought it was very well done, but a friend of mine (with whom I usually agree about books) didn't care for it.